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Re: Ceratops (was RE: Pterosaur diversity (was: Re: Waimanu))



Andreas Johansson wrote:

Is the parenthetical statement to suggest that higher clades like
Titanosauria should be kept?

Yep. These higher-level taxa do not come under the purview of the ICZN, although co-ordinated family-level taxa do. In the Linnaean hierachial system, the latter includes superfamilies, families, subfamilies, and tribes (respectively -oidea, -idae, -inae, and -ini); though sometimes the -oidea suffix is applied to higher-level taxa that are not explicitly coupled to a specific family (like Echinoidea). Thus, Ceratopsia and Titanosauria are treated differently to Ceratopsidae and Titanosauridae. Conceivably, Ceratopsia could exist without _Ceratops_, and Titanosauria could exist without _Titanosaurus_. Dinosauria does not contain _Dinosaurus_ (a therapsid), for example; but that's OK. By contrast, family-level taxa need to contain the name-giving genus.


That's probably more than you wanted or needed to know.  Sorry.  :-)

Cheers

Tim